Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister looks forward to hearing the views of the House on this Bill. We will be supporting the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2015 because it is based on the various agreements the Minister referred to, namely, the Lansdowne Road agreement, which succeeded the Haddington Road agreement, and it has been voted on democratically by hundreds of thousands of public servants who have, as the Minister rightly said, had severe financial measures imposed on them in recent years. This is the start of a process of unwinding that by degrees. I will talk about the unwinding process and whether it can be done by degrees or in the timescale the Minister might like versus the timescale others might choose. I will refer to the one or two aspects in the Minister's speech I want to deal with, but I also want to put some things on record from our side of the House. Some of it will cover ground the Minister has covered and go through matters in respect of the FEMPI legislation and some of the key provisions included in it. I have specific issues we will inevitably raise in detail on Committee Stage.

We have to put on the record the history of the FEMPI legislation. The first Act was passed in 2009 and it introduced what was commonly known as the pension levy. The second FEMPI Act in 2009 reduced the salaries of public sector workers. In 2010 we had FEMPI legislation again and the Act imposed a public service pension reduction, PSPR, on pensions of €12,000 and upwards. It also altered the minimum wage, which has since been amended again. In 2011 we also had the FEMPI (Amendment) Act which dealt with the situation of the existing pay reductions to be applied to sitting judges. It introduced a new wage scale for judges appointed after the commencement of the Act and that legislation also reduced the remuneration of certain other officeholders, namely, the Taoiseach and Ministers. Then we had the FEMPI Act 2013, which brought in a reduction in the remuneration of certain public servants, including Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, the Judiciary and other officeholders.

People might wonder what FEMPI legislation is, but it is relevant to anybody in the public service in relation to the Lansdowne Road agreement which was concluded on 29 May 2015 and the Haddington Road agreement about which we have spoken separately.

The Lansdowne Road agreement, LRA, was not unanimously accepted by all trade unions. The Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland, ASTI, voted 74% against the Lansdowne Road agreement with a turnout of 31%.

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